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Final 2018 budget bill eases biomedical researchers’ policy worries

The 2018 omnibus spending bill released yesterday is cheering biomedical researchers. Not only because of the 8.8% raise it gives the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—its largest in 15 years—but also because it blocks or drops several proposed policy changes that had concerned the community.

The $3 billion boost, to $37 billion, is the biggest percent increase NIH has received since a 5-year effort to double the agency’s budget ended in 2003. (That doesn’t include 2 years of stimulus funding during the recession.) Research advocates credit the generous increase to strong bipartisan support for NIH as well as the recent budget agreement raising mandatory caps on spending. “This is extraordinary. We are tremendously grateful,” says Jennifer Zeitzer, director of legislative relations for the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology in Bethesda, Maryland.

The bill includes $414 million in new funding for Alzheimer’s disease research, a 30% increase. The Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies Initiative receive $140 million more, for a total of $400 million. The All of Us precision medicine study gets a $60 million increase, to $290 million. The bill also provides $40 million in new funds for research on a universal flu vaccine, for $100 million in total. At least $500 million in new funds will be targeted to research on opioid addiction. An accompanying report calls for setting up a multi-institute Down syndrome initiative that has been championed by an advocacy group, but does not specify a funding amount.

The report echoes their views: “There is concern that policy changes could have long-term, unintended consequences for this research, add unnecessary regulatory burdens, and substantially increase the number of studies in the ClinicalTrials.gov database that are not clinical trials.” It directs NIH to apply the new reporting rules only to studies that were already considered clinical trials and to delay adding basic studies while NIH consults with the community about more suitable ways to report their results. NIH must seek input and update Congress on its plans by 22 June.

“We are pleased,” says cognitive psychologist Jeremy Wolfe of the Harvard University–affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, who led researchers’ opposition to the broader clinical trials definition. “It may take a while to get such [an alternative reporting] process in place, but this certainly looks like a move in the right direction.”

In another provision welcomed by the research community, the report rejects an effort by President Donald Trump’s administration to slash the overhead payments that accompany NIH grants to universities. Like earlier House of Representatives and Senate versions of the bill, the report states that NIH cannot depart from its current method of negotiating those rates.